This is Code Switch from MPR.

I'm Karen Grieg's Debates.

Walk into a store that sells lots of cosmetics today and if you're a person who wears foundation

that will be makeup for your face, you have a whole range of choices from drugstore brands

to luxury makeup. And that's because a revolution erupted in 1973 that changed the makeup business

forever. Meet Erica Barris. Hey hey, hey, Erica hosts MPR Planet Money Podcast. This is

a show about the interesting side of economics. Recently, Code Switch and Planet Money got together

to tell a story. It's about fashion fair, a luxury cosmetics brand for black women that

ruled the beauty industry back in the day until it didn't. And to tell that story, we're going to

take you to a moment just a few years ago. One day in late 2019, longtime friends Desiree Rodgers

and Cheryl Maybury McKissick found themselves in a room waiting. They were waiting to see if they'd

want an auction to buy a company. And so as you can imagine, extremely nerve-wracking,

you know, where you have to just put in your best bid, you know, sealed envelope kind of a thing.

This wasn't the frenzied auction you've seen in the movies. There were no people raising their

paddles bidding against each other as the price goes up and up and up. Here, you don't know who you're

bidding against and you have no clue what their motive might be. It was a blind bid and so it's

lawyers in a room opening envelopes. Cheryl Maybury McKissick says the quiet made it feel intense.

You're in basically a conference room with your attorneys and you know, you put your bid in

and the top two bids actually get an opportunity to bid against each other. And if you don't

win those top two bids, you're kind of out of there pretty quickly.

It had taken a lot for these two women to get here. They'd raised millions of dollars.

It's all private information and you put your bid in and then they take a two whoever the other

...